Fantastic Metropolis

“No, Joe Joey-oe makes six. Six dead since summer.”

“Maybe they’ll take us at the Gibson Street shelter.”

“Deader than dead, Joey. Broke his promise too.”

“I need a drink a hell of a lot more than a bed.”

“Me, I need food. Stomach is tight as a fist.”

“Someone stoke the fire. It’s fuckin’ cold.”

“This ain’t cold, Joe. Christmas is cold.”

“You want to check out the Colonel?”

“Dumpster biscuits. Side of slaw.”

“Valentine’s Day, Joey-oey.”

“What about it?”

“That’s cold.”

“Yeah.”

I stand next to them, listening silently. As long as I don’t say anything, they can’t see me. If I speak, there I am. But their conversation gutters like the fire and goes out and the quiet gets all creepycrawly so I stagger off into the darkness down the concrete embankment to the river to take a leak. The bridge sings to me as a truck passes over, stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni. My piss slaps heavily into the freezing water. I wave my dick at the EPA, zip, and turn left toward a sky full of mean stars. They get brighter in winter, bigger. Cold makes the air like a lens. At ten below stars can burn through a man’s eyes right into his brain—happened to me once. Downstream, there’s a giant’s comb washed up on the embankment. I slink over to it, trying to convince myself that it’s only a ladder with the side rail missing, that his footprints are just big smears of mud. If I don’t believe in him, see, he doesn’t exist. The wood is mostly dry so I decide to be a citizen and drag it up to the fire.

“You broke your promise, Joey-oey-oey-oe.” He swallows the dead man’s name, turning it into a yodel. “No Joey-noey-oey-oey-oe.” He has the voice for it, but no rhythm. Crazy as a chicken and chatting with his hallucinations. It’s a luxury I can’t afford because of the curse. My hallucinations can come true if I’m not careful. I break some teeth off the comb and toss them into the fire barrel.

“No Joey-oey-noey-oey-oey-oey-no.”

“Hey Gene Autry, shut the fuck up.”

As flames lick out of the barrel, I eyeball them. Gene Autry is wrapped in a tarp beneath one of those easy-load shopping carts where the basket rides high and shallow. Two guys are lying together in a cardboard box with a picture of a computer desk on it. They’ve stuffed it with newspapers for warmth. Tape the ends, stick a $200 stamp on the box and we could mail them to Florida. Or North Dakota. A black guy is stretched out in the shadows that flutter like crows against the bridge abutment. Asleep or passed out, but not dead. He hasn’t shrunk like dead men do.

“Gene Autry?” says one of the box guys. “Is that what you called him? How old are you anyway?”

“Old enough to be fuckin’ president.”

“Joey-noey-oey-oey-no.”

“Listen, I gotta eat.”

“So eat.” The box shudders.

“Besides, you ain’t got shit to drink.”

“No.”

If that’s true, I can’t stay with them. If I don’t pour some alcohol on my imagination soon, the river could thicken to blood. Frogs might crawl up my pants.

“But Mags’ll have a bottle. Always does.”

“Always does,” says Gene Autry, “even though Joey’s dead and some other Joe is next. Like this one, no?” He points at me, even though I still haven’t said anything. Maybe he thinks I’m one of his hallucinations. “JoJo, son of Joey-oe, Nojo.” He’s staring X rays through me.

“This Mags,” I say, speaking for the first time. “He’ll be here when?” I snap the comb’s spine with my foot.

One box guy says, “Mags ain’t a fuckin’ bus.”

“She tries to help.”

“Sorta like the fairy godmother, Nojo,” says Gene Autry.

“More like Santa.”

“Ain’t many left like old Mags.”

I stir the bones of the fire, feel its smoky breath on my face.

“Where you from, Nojo?” says Gene Autry.

“That’s not my name.” I left my name under the plastic chair in that hospital waiting room a long time ago. I can be anyone now, see. Bob Hope, Madame Curie, Baby Jesus, Lassie, anything I can imagine. That’s the curse. But I should never have opened my mouth. They’re asking me questions, next they’ll be taking my pulse.

“You got to be from someplace.”

“Everybody is.”

I keep my voice locked up. Its wings tickle my throat.

“Someplace secret maybe?”

“Like Fort Knox?”

“The North Pole?”

“No-no-no Joe. Oz.”

A car passes over and the bridge sings to me again, sun so hot I froze to death. But death hits an odd, clangy note, like a cell door slamming. Like a warning. I glance up at the bridge. When I look back, there they are, standing on the other side of the fire.

The man is wearing a long, open military coat over eighteen sweaters. A ski mask covers his face. He is carrying a nylon bag with NASA printed on it. He tucks it under his arm and it clinks. She’s taller, with wide, square shoulders. She has on that tatty mink coat my mother gave to the Salvation Army in 1969. It makes her look like a fur refrigerator. Her hair is dirty and gray and flattened against her head. She’s wearing lipstick. “Evening, boys.” We can see her breath when she speaks. “Nice weather for penguins.” She nods at me. “New member of the tribe?”

“Nojo,” says Gene Autry. “Nojo of Oz.”

She smiles at me. “You know, they’ll give you a free coat over on Gibson Street.” The lipstick has reddened her teeth.

“New here,” I say. “Not sure where all the buttons are yet.”

“He thought you were a man, Mags.”

“Coat might save your life,” she says.

“I’ve got the fire,” I say. “I’m okay.”

“Nojo’s okay, Joey’s dead. Broke his promise.”

“Mags, I’m glad to see you and everything, but I gotta ask. You got anything to drink?”

“Joey-noey-oe was the sixth. Some got sick, couple froze, one got run over. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, all dead.”

“Sell my left nut for a taste.”

“You thirsty?” She watches me. My face disappears and I feel her read the nerves scribbling in my head. “Takes the chill off.”

I nod.

“ángel, some spirits for our new friend.”

ángel is nobody’s friend. He glares angrily, then squats to zip the NASA bag. The two box guys unpack themselves. Gene Autry walks his shopping cart forward without getting out from underneath the basket. The black guy sits, tries to stand and falls over on his side. He is thin as a knife. ángel hefts an unopened fifth of Conquistador whiskey into the firelight. He twists the cap; the seal cracks with a sound like a cockroach popping. He drinks with his eyes fixed on me: two, three big swallows. He lowers the bottle, his lips gleaming. “¡Me cago en la leche de tu puta madre!”

The black guy coughs like an old Chevy and makes it up on the third try.

“What’d he say?”

“He shits in the milk of my whore mother.” Mags extends her hand for the bottle. “¡Coño!”

She wiggles her fingers. When he gives it to her, she passes it immediately to the black guy. His Adam’s apple bobs spasmodically, as if he’s trying to remember how to swallow. His hands shake as he tips his head back and kisses the bottle on the mouth. All it takes is one swallow and he’s steady as a gravestone. We watch as the whiskey makes its way slowly around the fire. When it’s my turn, I cradle the bottle for a moment. It is a Preferred Blend and has A Tradition of Excellence Since 1931. The Conquistador is on horseback; he’s wearing armor the color of an old spoon. He has ridden a long way, over mountains and deserts and bar codes, in his quest for strong drink. I lift his bottled gold.

The whiskey vaporizes in my mouth and whistles down my throat like steam. It changes as it settles in my gut, becomes a kind of glow, only it carries a weight and the bitter fragrance of newly-split oak. The fragrance curls into my blood, streams to my head. Then my vision blurs and for one short, infinitely sweet moment, things stop being like other things. They simply are. The bridge becomes the bridge, my shoe is itself only. I can no longer hear the world whisper of secret and insidious connections. Leaves cease to conspire with branches. The ground does not rise up to meet me. I am that dull and happy stranger who has nothing special about him.

“Hey, Nojo.”

“Next!”

“Wake up, damn it.”

I feel someone grab at my sleeve and drag me back to the crackle and snap of words. Time for the Conquistador to ride on and topple new imaginations.

The bottle circles the fire three times before Mags stops it. By then the black guy is sitting, muttering, with his head between his legs. One of the box guys is shivering so hard it makes my bones rattle. I can still feel the cold creep through my shirt and pinch my nipples. But now I wear the armor of a conquistador and don’t care. I am stronger than weather; if I want I can melt a hole to the center of the earth. Mags holds the bottle by its neck and waves it over the fire. Half an inch of whiskey splashes and skins down the sides.

“Once m-more, Mags.” The box guy’s teeth click like hail on a dumpster.

“Don’t be so damn greedy.” She shakes the bottle at him.

“I’m f-f-fuckin’ freezing. Jesus, do I have to b-beg?”

“You could,” she says. “Joe did. Not that it mattered.”

“Oh, no, Joe-oey wouldn’t beg.” Gene Autry shakes his head. “Not Joey-oe.”

“Things change at the end,” she says. “I know, I was there.”

“Oh no. No-no-no.” Gene Autry lurches from under his shopping cart, sneezes and begins sorting through the treasures in the basket. “Oh no, you weren’t.”

“Heard he died of fever.”

“Uh-uh. He fuckin’ froze.”

“He promised me,” says Gene Autry. A ball of twine flips out of the basket and ravels down the embankment toward the river. “Nope. No!”

“I found him on a bench by the pond in Fisher Park,” she says. “He’d pissed and puked himself. When I woke him up, he asked for help. I took him home.”

“Se la tiró.”

“He never touched me, barely knew where he was. I took off his clothes and gave him a hot bath. I put him in my own bed. I sang to him.”

“No way, no such bathtub.” Gene Autry points a shoe at Mags. “And where’d you get a bed anyway?”

“Where I got this whiskey, eh ángel?”

ángel scratches his nose through the ski mask. “Eso es como cagadas de hormiga.”

“This is not ant shit.” She waggles the bottle at him. “It’s important. Six people are dead because they had no place to go. These men are suffering.”

He shrugs and picks up the NASA bag.

“Poor ángel doesn’t understand what we’re doing here. He’d rather be home on the couch scratching his balls and watching It’s A Wonderful Life. Me, I try to help.”

“No,” says Gene Autry. “Nope. They found Joey behind the middle school. It was in the paper. No-no-no, absolutely not.”

“I had to stick him someplace after it was over. He didn’t care.”

“But he—okay.” Gene Autry finally finds what he’s looking for. “Okay, the no-good bastard was my only friend.” He shakes a white telephone handset loose from the pile and speaks into it. “You promised me, Joey-oe. No, you did. You said you’d found it and you said you’d show me the way back and you promised, Jojoey.”

“Back where?” says Mags.

He waves for her to be quiet; he’s listening. “No, Joe.” He listens some more. “No, but Joe…” He cups a hand over the speaker. “Back to the world. He promised to show me how.”

The box guys glance at each other in alarm. One takes the other by the hand and they scuttle back to their box. I don’t bother to hide. I’ve been quiet so long, I’m invisible again.

“Give me that.” Mags transfers the whiskey bottle to her left hand and reaches for the handset with her right.

“Just a minute, Joey-oe. She wants to speak to you.”

She holds it a couple of inches away from her ear. “What?” She shakes her head. “You’re dead, Joe. Hang up.” She tosses it back to Gene Autry.

His eyes are like wounds. “Joe!” He listens, jiggles the handset, tries again. “Joe.” His voice is as small as a teardrop. It is suddenly so quiet that we can hear the black guy grumbling in his sleep. Even the fire is holding its breath. For a moment Gene Autry stares at the holes in the mouthpiece; as if trying somehow to connect the pattern of dots into the dead man’s face. His mouth opens, closes.

“Shi….” The black guy’s leg jerks and he keels onto his side. “Nmmm.” His face is the color of my father’s belt.

“You want to go back to the world? There’s only one way. Climb up to the highway and head south into town.” Mags grasps Gene Autry’s shoulders and aims him upriver. “When you come to Summer, take a left. Go through three lights and bear left again onto Gibson. The shelter is number twenty-four.”

“Nomm,” the black guy mutters. “No room.”

He’s right. I’ve never been able to fit my damned imagination inside any of the shelters or clinics or hospitals. Even now, diminished by the Conquistador, it’s still too swollen to be contained by any building.

Gene Autry shakes out of Mags’s grip, stumbles to the barrel and drops the phone into the fire.

“He begged for what?” The question sneaks out of the side of my mouth. I’m astonished; I didn’t mean to reveal myself.

Gene Autry drags his shopping cart away from us.

“You said he begged.” It’s the Conquistador, see, hijacking my voice. “What for?”

“Whiskey,” she says. “Booze, the demon, the eighty proof miracle.” She grins. “Actually, I believe he called it laughing soup.”

“Joey would’ve said that.” Gene Autry folds himself back under his basket. “Said it all the time, yeah, gimme a cup of the laughing soup. What Joe said. Only he’s dead.”

“That what you need, Nojo?” Mags jiggles the bottle; the whiskey sparkled. “Make a new man of you.”

“Sure,” says the Conquistador. He’s frightening me; I’ve never been two people at the same time before.

“Don’t bother,” says Gene Autry. “Nothing lasts.”

“I bet it’s hard being you,” she says. “Busy twisting the world into a poem. Hard to be so different.” I can feel Mags rummaging around inside our head.

“Fuck, yes,” says the Conquistador.

“Nmmm. Uhh, go home.”

“But get a load on and boom—you’re just like everyone else.”

“Boom.” The Conquistador laughs.

“Nojo disappears,” says Mags.

The Conquistador laughs again and waves our hand. “Bye.”

“No-no-no.” Gene Autry gathers the tarp tightly around him. “Don’t you understand? Joe’s dead. Nothing lasts.”

“Oh, this can,” she says. “It’s a preferred blend, a special laughing soup just guaranteed to make you the same as everyone. Or maybe you’d rather freeze with these crazies, die like poor Joe? I can help, but only if you let me.” She holds out the bottle. “Okay? All you have to do is give us a kiss. Just like in the fairy tale.”

She is going to put out my imagination. I can run away, except that I have the courage of a conquistador.

“The same as everyone.”

As she comes nearer, the whiskey starts to boil.

“Bye, Nojo.”

The bottle warps and sags around her hand, like plastic in a fire.

“Kiss.”

She catches me by the wrist. The dead mink smells like the back of my mother’s closet. I can still escape if I want but I am brave and hold my ground. The same. She lifts the ruined bottle, tilts the rest of the whiskey into her mouth and holds it there. As everyone. Her face grows huge and scary as the moon but I don’t flinch. A job, TV, and a bed with green sheets. When she kisses me, my lips part.

The whiskey floods from her into me, scalding my tongue and throat, thawing memories that had been frozen for years. I start to laugh and choke at the same time. There I was, sitting on the shoes in the back of my parents’ closet and I was wearing my dad’s motorcycle helmet and I had tied a towel cape around my neck and mommy was calling, “Petey, where are you? Peter!” and I tried not to giggle but I was only a little kid and she heard me and opened the door and she said, “Petey, I’ve been looking all over, how long have you been sitting in the dark?” and I said, “This is outer space and I’m an astronaut and it has to be dark because it’s always nighttime in space…,” but before I could finish she caught me up in her arms and hugged me and said, “What am I going to do with you?” and when I wriggled, my space helmet fell over my eyes and she laughed, “You’re just as bad as me, you know. You let your imagination run away with you,” and she kept laughing at me, so I told her I was not bad and mommy said, “No, it’s what makes you special, a kind of magic. Because if you have an imagination, you can do anything, be anything when you grow up.”

Anything.

But it wasn’t her fault. See, she didn’t realize it was a curse.

---

I woke the next morning. The fire was out. The box was empty. I was alone. Up under the shelter of the abutment was a bundle of old clothes. There was broken glass everywhere. I had a headache. The dim sunlight made it worse.

I climbed through the weeds to the top of the bridge. There were lots of cars now. People were going to work. I stuck my thumb out to hitch a ride. A car went by, heading south into town. It didn’t stop. Another. I had to laugh. I didn’t blame them, the way that I looked. A truck was coming from the opposite direction. I listened as it passed. The bridge didn’t sing.

I was done with imagination. But I had a name. It was Pete.

---

“Why the Bridge Stopping Singing” originally appeared in F&SF in September of 1996.